


Luke 1:30 and Queen Anne's Lace

by bors



Series: Of Deals and Covenants [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Identity Issues, Language of Flowers, M/M, Pre-Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-02-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:46:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22699624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bors/pseuds/bors
Summary: The issue of Harry Potter ends up being more complicated than any of them expected.
Relationships: Bartemius Crouch Jr./Harry Potter
Series: Of Deals and Covenants [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1623997
Comments: 17
Kudos: 169





	Luke 1:30 and Queen Anne's Lace

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to everyone who commented on Hallowed Things! I hadn't really considered doing a sequel until I saw how many people were interested in what happened to the real Harry. It didn't turn out quite like I expected, but I had a lot of fun writing it. I hope you all enjoy!

They decide that Harry's room will be blue. Periwinkle, to be exact. Before that, Barty spends most of his evenings arguing loudly with Sirius, who thinks Gryffindor red is the most appropriate choice. Barty, who isn't nearly as passionate about Slytherin house colors as he pretends to be, learns that arguing with Sirius is a fantastic way to pass the time.

Harrison is the one who decides it, in the end. He claims periwinkle will be a familiar color for the real Harry when he arrives, and even Barty doesn't know if the changeling is being honest or just making up fairy stories to distract him and Sirius. 

It doesn't really matter. The room is periwinkle and everyone is pleased. Remus likes the color well enough, and likes even more that Barty and Sirius can no longer argue about it. (They quickly prove that they can, and will, but there's no heat behind it and they all like the noise. Even if they don't admit it.)

The horcruxes have worn on the household, despite being absorbed as quickly as possible. That kind of dark magic can't exist in a place without tainting it, and for once the darkness is anything but soothing to Barty. He'd been involved with Voldemort for too long and the man's magic still had too much of a grip on him. Barty feels the drain of the horcruxes even more than the other Grimmauld Place residents. Harrison, possessive as a nundu over his territory, keeps them far away from Barty.

Barty makes it easy on him. He spends most of his time outside in the gardens and allows himself to pretend that he doesn't know the intricacies of the magic behind splitting a soul. 

Despite being removed from it, Barty knows that Hufflepuff's cup is the last piece they find. He doesn't know much about how they had discovered all the locations, only that Harrison has a wicked accuracy for sniffing out pieces of Voldemort's soul and it only gets easier the more of it the changeling eats. He thinks Dumbledore has something to do with it as well, but he avoids the man almost as carefully as he avoids horcruxes. Truly, he's content knowing nothing but that Harrison is unharmed by so much contact with the gross magic. 

Now, though, they're all gone. He never has to deal with Voldemort again, and Harry will be coming home. Harrison, too, is more excited that Barty had expected. 

"I wonder if he's like me," Harrison says when Barty asks about the change in mood, "D'you think they told him who he was? Or did he grow up thinking he was fey?"

"I feel like that would have been harder to fake than it was for you," Barty tries to be reassuring, but he's not very good at it. He never had been. Slick and clever had always been more his strong suit than charm or earnestness. Azkaban, though, had made it worse. It stripped away the sweetness from his expressions and he's not recovered it. Harrison seems to understand the sentiment anyway; just like Barty, he's no good at being human.

The beauty of Grimmauld Place is that neither of them are expected to be. Half of the residents aren't human in the first place, which is a good starting point. The other two had both spent over a decade being tortured. Barty hadn't spent as long in Azkaban as Sirius, but he knows what it'll do to a person. Probably, before Azkaban, Sirius would have had enough energy to be upset that his not-godson came in a pair with an ex-Death Eater. Especially since Barty's pretty sure that Sirius personally knew the Longbottoms. 

There were probably plenty of things Sirius had energy for before Azkaban that he doesn't now. And the thing is, Barty gets it. Sirius drifts around the house, avoiding his mother's portrait with a practiced ease that makes it easy for Barty to imagine a teenaged Sirius avoiding the real thing. The portrait is one of the first things Barty gets rid of. Pureblood family portraits are notoriously hardy, but Barty is a Slytherin with a grudge. He's never been grateful to someone quite like he is Sirius Black.

The only time he ever sees his fellow ex-con with any sort of animation is when the man is a dog or when he's talking to his godson. Barty doesn't count the time he caught Sirius blasting through a room of Black heirlooms with the sort of rage that makes him look more like Bellatrix. Barty understands that too, though he hasn't felt it as much since he killed his father.

Being around Sirius is just simpler than Barty expected. So is living in Grimmauld Place. He expected to be more bothered, given that he can't leave.

Dumbledore had been shockingly helpful after the third task, stalling long enough for Harrison to reach Barty and force him through two layers of wards and into Grimmauld Place. Barty doubts that Dumbledore would have done any of that had he known exactly who was masquerading as Alastor Moody. When Moody later confessed that fact, it was too late for the headmaster to change his mind, but not too late to raise the alarm. Bartemius Crouch Jr. is officially a wanted man again.

Now, when Dumbledore comes for his weekly tea, both out of a fondness for his old students and an obviously unbearable curiosity about Harrison's fey magic, Barty hides with Buckbeak in the attic.

(On his end, Dumbledore very believably pretends that he doesn't know about it. Barty might be a terrible person, but so was Albus, once. And the headmaster is wise enough to know that both Harrison and Barty are much nicer people together than they are apart.)

Magical Britain isn't quite as focused on Barty as it had been on Sirius Black, if only because the focus is on bringing in as many of the Death Eaters as possible and an individual manhunt just isn't conducive to that. Still Barty is stuck in Grimmauld Place, unless he wishes to go overseas. He had expected it to rankle, expected to get sick of drifting between the library and the gardens and, when he's particularly antsy, whatever corners of the manor still need to be thoroughly cleaned. The feeling of confinement had never come, though.

He'd waited for it, nervous and twitchy and refusing to go anywhere near the basement of the old house. He has no problem with scrubbing out the most cursed of the old bedrooms, but he's had enough of basements to last him a dozen lifetimes. He'd also refused to be alone with Sirius at first. Remus had yet to even show up. But Sirius, while more caustic than witty anymore, simply hadn't cared enough about Barty for there to be bad blood between them. 

Barty likes to think that the man might even be comfortable with him now, even though he doubts he's particularly liked.

Perhaps it's not having to down polyjuice every hour, or that he's not stuck pretending to be a paranoid old auror that helps Barty find peace at Grimmauld Place. Perhaps it's the safety of the Black wards. Sometimes Barty even allows himself to think it might be the tentative peace he finds with Remus and Sirius, who are the only people he sees other than Harrison, that helps make Grimmauld more of a home than even the Death Eater ranks before Voldemort's first fall. And those Death Eaters were supposed to be his family.

He wonders where Harry is going to fit into all of this. He's not as invested as the others, really. He's never lost his Ravenclaw curiosity, which the boy's eminent arrival piques, but he doesn't feel the same brilliant joy Sirius does or the more cautious excitement of the other two.

It's for the best, he thinks. It makes it easy for him to focus on Harrison, not that he can ever imagine that being difficult. Harrison needs him, and it's another one of the things giving Barty a purpose these days. His changeling is anxious and, while eager to see his counterpart, equally stressed about it. There's a bitterness to the creature that only Barty has been privy to. Bitterness that Harry is getting to return to his own culture while Harrison's ban is permanent. 

It's probably more accurate to say that Harrison is bitter that he's supposed to be dead by now. Designed to be replaced.

Barty plants white chrysanthemums in the gardens and learns how to weave them into a crown. He takes advantage of Harrison's patience for him and uses a sticking charm to fasten it to the feyling's head. Barty calls him "highness" until Sirius does such a good impression of Lucius Malfoy's sycophancy that they all laugh too hard when he tries.

Poetically, it's July 31st that sees Harry returned to them. It's a grand affair, purposefully so. They decide to host the fey in the ballroom, the grandest room in Grimmauld Place, and recruit Dobby to help Kreacher get it up to standard. Barty's pretty sure Kreacher hates the other house elf almost as much as he hates the implication that he needs help, but he's been on his best behavior since Harrison absorbed the locket's horcrux and subsequently destroyed it, so there's no reason to entervine really. 

And then it's the four of them--Harrison, Barty, Sirius, and Remus--together with the empty shells that once hosted pieces of Voldemort's soul. Or rather, whatever was left of the vessels.

Remus had been the slowest addition to the household. It took Harrison being pulled out of Hogwarts in the wake of Voldemort's public defeat and Sirius' pardon to drag the man out of where ever he'd been holed up. They'd had to explain the whole situation, of course. Barty had almost ended up cursed during that conversation. 

It turns out, the patronus is the only wizard spell that Harrison can still cast, or at least mimic with any degree of accuracy. He still can't do it with a wand, but it warms Remus to the current state of affairs and distracts him from his ire towards Barty. Barty's still convinced that Sirius is the only thing that made Remus stay.

Now, they all face the fey delegation as a unit. Remus' initial aversion to Barty is undetectable, and Sirius doesn't even hesitate to stand by Barty. It warms him more than he expects it to. 

Harrison stands between the two groups. He's a peacekeeper of sorts, or perhaps a guard. Barty's particularly delighted to note that his nundu stands a bit closer to him than anyone else. He doesn't need protection, really. He suspects Sirius is the weak link given how long the man spent in Azkaban, but he's selfishly pleased nonetheless.

He wouldn't ever admit it, but it also reassures him. The fey are impressive and awe-inspiring, but they inspire a horror in Barty that he didn't think possible after all the things he'd seen in Voldemort's service. "Be not afraid," Remus whispers to himself, his words soft but emphasized, as though he's quoting something. Barty doesn't recognize it, and he is afraid.

The fey closest to them is a being made almost entirely of blinding light, eyes, and wings. He can't look at it straight on, like he wants to, but it seems to pulse. The wings flutter about its edges as the eyes writhe. He counts three sets of wings before he has to look away again. The glow is so bright it has a faint pair of sundogs around it.

Not all fey are like this, as Harrison is a testament to. It's old knowledge, not taught amongst decent magical folk anymore. The Crouches, like many long-standing families, had snippets of such information in their library. Realizing what exactly Lily Potter made her deal with fills Barty with a surprising degree of respect for the mudblood's power.

Jarringly, he wonders if he ought to be using words like that for a woman who'd been able to do what Lily Potter had done.

The creature speaks in a voice that doesn't boom for all that it fills the room loudly and evenly. It sounds almost like it comes from the walls. "You have entirely eliminated the dark wizard Voldemort."

It isn't a question, but Harrison answers anyway. "We have. You see the empty vessels."

"I see all," the thing replies, and it's voice is a weird combination of high and low sounds. Barty remembers Trelawney gasping and coughing out some prediction once, when he'd been unfortunate enough to run into her. He reckons this sounds similar, and wonders if that speaks well for the supposed seer or speaks against this fey. "In accordance with the Deal made with Lily Potter, I return Harry Potter to you now."

It sounds official, like the opening statements of the Wizengamut. Harrison seems to know the response. The changeling bows at the waist in one sweeping movement, throwing his arms out to the side and slightly upwards. It looked like a caricature of pureblood etiquette, something so grossly exaggerated it would have been humiliating for either the person bowing or the one being bowed to. Judging by the lack of response from the elder fey, it must have been appropriate.

The light cast off from the many eyes catches Harrison's splayed arms and the shadows look almost like wings. Barty makes out the shape of primaries before the fey seems to blink, disappearing from the room and leaving the two lesser fey behind.

They'd been flanking it, and before the other had left Barty had mostly ignored them. They'd faded easily into the background when such an old creature was before them. Now he doesn't think he can take his eyes away. They might have been called humanoid if one only paid attention to the silhouette. The term would be rather inappropriate besides that. 

The green one, across from them to the left, has eyes that split right down its center. Barty's disturbed to note that the eyes are the exact shade of periwinkle as Harry's new room. He catches Sirius' gaze and decides in that moment that he'd help the man paint the whole house bright, Gryffindor red before leaving Harry's room that color.

The other fey, to the right, is a peachy color that reminds Barty of the edges of a summer sunset. It has eight black eyes like a spider, and Barty isn't able to look any lower than its shoulders. If he tries, a paralyzing dread overtakes him. He would suspect some sort of ward if he thought fey this old used human magic. 

He thinks that the real Harry must've been tucked behind this fey the entire time, because he never sees the boy arrive. One moment he's trying to tear himself away from the horrifying spectacle, and the next there's something next to him, clinging to Sirius' robes. A toddler. He's confused for a moment, then he looks closer and notices the dark skin and bright, grassy eyes. Sirius' exclamation only confirms it. This is Harry Potter.

Harrison is still facing off with the older fey, but he doesn't seem paralyzed like Barty had been. Barty supposes that if the changeling had been able to converse with that mass of eyes, then these two creatures weren't too horrifying. Harrison makes a few short gestures that seem like part of their communication. It frustrates Barty that he doesn't understand what's passing between them, but he's more relieved that he's not going to have to be more involved with the higher fey.

He watches Sirius scoop the child in his arms and fall back. Remus gives Barty a look, and follows slowly, clearly expecting the other human in the room to join them. Barty still remembers feeding a scrawny, confused boy vermin in the Defense professor's rooms at Hogwarts. For a moment, the image overlaps with Harrison now--taller and filled out and all but glowing in the light cast from the strange interlopers--but the man knows better. He also knows he'd be useless against any fey regardless, and that Harrison has a better chance without him there. 

He leaves, and drags the other two with him to the nook he'd set up in preparation for this visit. He's never fully gotten over his paranoia and distrust, and it shows when he reveals the corner of the library he's transformed. Iron plaques, stolen from various spots around the manor and from the Black vaults, line the small space. He's blockaded the entrance with iron grates from unused floos, and feels only a little foolish wielding a poker like a wand in front of the other two wizards. 

Harrison hisses when he finds them thirty minutes or so later. The baby is asleep, and all three adult wizards are still tense from the encounter. The shelter clearly repulses Harrison every bit as much as it was designed to repulse the other fey.

Barty disentangles himself from the iron and watches his changeling carefully. Harrison's eyes are plastered to the child, and an expression Barty isn't familiar with has come over his face. Barty doesn't think he's ever seen Harrison so upset since they've come to Grimmauld Place and it worries him. This is new.

He waves off Sirius and Remus and links his fingers with Harrison's, guiding him to the gardens. When they'd first moved in, the plants had been either dead or overgrown, ratty with lack of care. Whatever planning had gone into them originally had been overrun by nature and magic.

Barty had spent the better part of the last few months channeling his excess energy into the space. When he hadn't been ridding the house of doxies or lining up cursed objects behind wards, that is. Now, in the peak of summer, it is blossoming with all sorts of plants, magical and mundane alike. As they stroll through the greenery, he takes the time to study his partner, who is too quiet.

At first, Barty had worried that the visit from the fey would somehow drain Harrison, revert him to the scrawny, dying thing he'd been when Barty had first met him. It seems foolish now. Harrison, despite his distress, seems a few inches taller and and more radiant than ever. He still bears little resemblance to the older fey, even considering that his mouth is probably full of shark-like teeth, and Barty is thankful that his monster is not quite so...incomprehensible. 

He wonders if it is more or less of a burden on Harrison, though. Different from the Potters and from the only fey he can recall meeting.

He thinks about looking in the mirror and seeing the features he has left of his mother. Perhaps he can understand better than most people, the dissonance between who you are and how you look. It doesn't make it any easier to guess how Harrison feels about his own appearance. Barty decides to broach instead the topic he has a better grasp on. 

"He's a baby," he says, in reference to Harry.

Harrison is quiet for a moment.

"He wasn't raised at all!" finally explodes from him, voice rough in a way that doesn't mean anger so much as an inability to contain himself enough to make proper human sounds. "How's he supposed to understand anything?" 

"He's not going to," Barty says, voice soft as he can make it.

"And I'm going to be alone, then! He was supposed to be like me."

"It wouldn't make things right." 

The creature has stopped walking, and glares at the ground. "No, but at least we could commiserate. It would almost be right, if we'd complimented each other. We could trade back? No. It would be an equal exhange. Now I just feel like I've been punished." 

Barty's pretty sure by now that it had been intended as a sort of punishment, or at least a lesson. It would make sense, given that Harrison hadn't been given the resources to not eventually wither away. He wonders if the fey are pleased or displeased by the fact that he's alive and healthy. Barty doesn't voice any of this; Harrison is clever enough to figure it out if he wants to, though Barty thinks that he might not want to, and can't blame him for it.

Harrison speaks again, voice loud and actually meeting Barty's gaze, "I was Harry Potter for fourteen years! He's not even old enough to know his own name."

And that was the crux of it, wasn't it? Harrison, as firmly as he'd demanded to be called that rather than taking Harry's name or choosing a new one, had been Harry for a long time. Perhaps not a long time to a fey who's aware of it, but Harrison had been all but human in that time. That discrepancy, tasting mortality more closely than most humans, yet being fey? Barty imagines it's jarring.

He wonders if any of them can understand what being Harry Potter means better than Harrison.

They pass under a carefully cultivated archway of sea-lavender, strung up with magic so that the purple blooms seem to support themselves overhead, and Barty wonders what makes a real Harry Potter as opposed to an imposter. He knows that Harrison spent years bearing the brunt of his relation to Lily Potter, and more recently an entire year hearing the echoes of her last words. Little Harry, despite being the one Lily had given birth to, had no such possession of her. 

It's harder than the riddles Barty used to answer to get into the Ravenclaw common room. He'd never been so interested in the common room itself as the riddles. Which one is the real Harry Potter? The one who happens to bear Potter blood, or the one whose greatest desire was for his dead parents? If Erised could judge, Barty knows which it would choose.

"No one says you can't be Harry Potter," Barty says as if he isn't just realizing it himself.

Harrison stares at him, not angry but distinctly displeased with the suggestion. "That boy has nothing! I've already elbowed my way into his life, I can't take his name too!" 

Perhaps that means more to a fey, Barty thinks. He doesn't care, no matter what that says about his morals. He's realized now what his nundu needs, and he can bear that burden for Harrison. He'd lose no sleep over it. "Lily Potter made the deal," Barty insists, forcing down any doubt he may have, any desire to wax philosophical about an issue that would be fascinating were it not afflicting the one he loved most. "She invited you, named you Harry Potter. You take nothing not forced upon you."

"My name was--" here, Barty winces. He can't quite hear the sound, but it makes his hair stand on end even as the foliage around him somehow grows more lush. "So it's not as if I don't have one to use."

The diversion is obvious, as is Harrison's frustration. Harry's frustration. Barty's convinced himself now. This is the real Harry Potter, whatever that means. Regardless of what had been intended when the deal was brokered. 

"Harry," he says forcefully, "Harry, none of us expected a baby. No matter what you think about names, Britain knows Harry Potter is fifteen. Whatever we call you, he can't be Harry Potter."

It seems to trigger something. Before Barty can continue, and he has so many arguments spinning in his head as to why Harry deserves to keep the name he was raised with, Harry is gone. The man isn't upset. Of any of them, this is the hardest on his partner.

He ignores the voice in his head that wants to chase Harry down, because despite the peace he's found at Grimmauld he still feels the pull of obsession. The same wave of violent emotion he'd felt when Harry first nailed a rat above his door makes him loathe to be apart from the feyling. It’s a compulsion he fights against consistently for the sake of his lingering sanity. Now, it's easier than usual to ignore the urge. He turns and crosses back under the statice, heading for the house. He needs to talk to Sirius.

He convinces Kreacher to make them tea before he enters the sitting room. Sirius is on the couch, holding the sleeping toddler. Remus is draped over the loveseat across from them. They both look as worn out as Barty feels. He takes a deep breath before sitting on the couch with Sirius. He never willingly sits this close to anyone except for Harry, and if the looks he gets are any indication then they clearly notice the deviation. It's good; he needs to make a point. 

There's a distinct divide between him and the rest of the family. He's no marauder, and he'd fought on the opposite side of the war. His crimes repulse them and he has little sympathy for it. Despite that, he's found himself almost too fond of them. He refuses to approach this as an outsider. 

"There's a problem," he begins, uncharacteristically nervous. He'd once been able to backstab and curse his way to the top of the Death Eater hierarchy. That coldness seems to have left him along with the tattoo on his left arm. Or perhaps it's just that he's never cared for people quite like this. It's different than the way he loves Harry, which had been head-first and mostly magic and instinct. The vulnerability makes him twitch.

Sirius leans closer, and doesn't bother shifting the child away from Barty. The implicit trust is almost as reassuring as Remus' moving in his chair to focus more on Barty. 

Barty flicks his tongue out over his lip. He hadn't ever really lost the tick, but it hadn't been bad since the end of the school year. Apparently it was lying in wait. "It's about Harry," he begins, before backtracking immediately, "Not this Harry, I mean. My Harry. And I suppose that's the problem."

Bartemius Crouch Sr. is laughing in his son's ear. The smooth politician's speech that Barty had been raised into had been obliterated by Azkaban and years under the imperius. He likely could have developed it again, and perhaps he should have. He doesn't have the will for it. He'd never been cut out for politics.

Sirius cuts in before Barty can tangle himself up further. "Regulus," Sirius says firmly.

This seems to make sense to Remus, but Barty just stares until Sirius elaborates. "I'm going to call him Regulus. Regulus James Potter. It won't be any easier to explain than trying to call this guy Harry Potter, but we," himself and Remus, Barty surmises, "realized that we had to do something. We already have a kid named Harry, as you know."

A kid older than all of them, technically, but it warms Barty nonetheless. He hadn't realized he cared so much about Sirius and Remus as to think of them the way he did in this moment. Family.

"Harry was going to give it up, for him."

"I know. But I realized that this boy is no more my Harry than James would be. I have two godsons, and I'm thankful for it."

Remus coughs pointedly, and Sirius hastily amends, "One godson, we each have one."

"James and Lily always said I would be the godfather of their second child," Remus explains in a kinder tone than he'd ever used with Barty.

There's a movement from the door, and Barty relaxes further to see Harry's head poke out of the air from under his cloak. He looks, if not happy, better than he had earlier. His skin is a flushed, burnished gold, likely heated from running around under a cloak in the summer.

Sirius doesn't even blink, throwing out a quick, "Harry, what d'you think of Regulus James for your baby brother?" Like that's all that needs to be said for everything to be okay. And maybe it is. 

It's simpler than politics, and it fills something inside of Barty that politics had never satisfied. 

Harry confesses to Barty later. They lay side by side in a far corner of the garden that is slightly less cultivated than the rest, and Harry holds a stone that Barty remembers vaguely from the ugly ring that had been one of Voldemort's vessels. "Fey, we don't change our names. Not like humans. We are our names, I suppose, I shouldn't be able to be Harry Potter." 

Barty doesn't interrupt when his partner's speech lapses in concentration. Instead, he plucks a sprig of white flowers from the clump next to him--they fill the edges of the garden, and they’re Sirius' favorite--and tucks it neatly behind the feyling’s ear. Harry smiles despite himself, and begins to speak again.

"Lily and James," he holds up the drab stone, and Barty forces down his curiosity to listen, "they called me their son. And maybe that's more magic, or maybe it's something else, but I'm...just Harry, somehow."

Barty could say a lot of things to that. He could remind the changeling that his memories of his previous home are so muddled that he still doesn't know why they sent him to die. So muddled that he has a more vivid recollection of his time as a human infant. Barty could weigh the magic behind birth and upbringing, or the sacrifices they've all made that have definitely bound them all together. He doesn't.

He says simply, "You've always been our Harry," and tucks more of the wild carrot into Harry's shaggy hair. 

Later, Barty'll brag that he's won when they end up painting little Regulus' room green, like his namesake's had been. It's the same Slytherin green that Barty had argued for in jest, and they're all surprised when Sirius decides on it. Sirius tells the baby that he's named after the two bravest men Sirius knows, and if Azkaban hadn't burned the sentimentality out of Barty, he might've cried. ("He cried horribly," says Harry later to anyone who'll listen.)


End file.
